The approaches described in this section are approaches that could be pursued, but not necessarily approaches that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section qualify as prior art merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section. Further, it should not be assumed that any of the approaches described in this section are well-understood, routine, or conventional merely by virtue of their inclusion in this section.
Conventional approaches for authenticating users at printing devices include manual entry of information and card-based authentication. Manually entering login credentials, such as a user identification and password or Personal Identification Number (PIN), via the operation panel of a printing device is slow and prone to error, leading to an unfavorable user experience, especially on printing devices with limited operation panels. Card-based authentication improves upon manual entry by allowing a user to identify themselves by scanning an identification card, such as a proximity card, a smart card, or a magnetic stripe card, at a card reader for a printing device. The card reader extracts the login credentials from the card, and an authentication process executing on the printing device verifies the information. Card-based authentication eliminates the need for users to manually enter information, which is faster and provides a more favorable user experience. While an improvement over manual entry, the use of identification cards does require that users carry the cards with them to be able to use printing devices that require user authentication.
With the proliferation of mobile devices and in particular smart phones, there is a need to authenticate and manage access to printing devices using mobile devices. While printing devices and mobile devices may support short-range communications methods such as Near Field Communications (NFC), Bluetooth, Bluetooth LE (BLE), and Wi-Fi, there are often limitations on the printing device side and/or the mobile device side that prevent establishing a two-way communications path between printing devices and mobile devices.